Well, if we really want to go back, I remember using an abacus:

Naw, I win!

Before the card readers:

I had to program an IBM 360/20 with a "register board". It had 8 toggle switches that you set (one byte in machine language), then reset it to poke that instruction into a memory register. The equation 2+2=? took 9 resets of the switch to program - numbers, mem location, operands and registers had to be specified.

We later got a "grid matrix board" which gave you an 8 X 8 pcb board with pins that you could connect jumper wires between and program much faster.

It had 4K of memory I think. The company (my uncle's) bought the machine used during a bankruptcy sale, and couldn't afford the keypunch machine until a couple of years later, but I believe he might have gotten a paper tape reader/punch machine before that. Once the data/programming was input, it was stored on tape (huge reel).

I hope I got the terminology right, it was back in 1968 I think, but as I was only 10 I can't trust my memory too well. I just realized I've probably forgotten more than I know

Guess what? I just saved a ton of money on my Auto(rotation) insurance!

There, their and they're. It's really that simple.

ST = Sam Tramiel

Yup. You win. I shared a cab with Sam and his dad Jack back in the late 80's during a Comdex convention here, and as a recent ST buyer I was curious, and asked. Heavy accent, dry sense of humor. Had a few laughs as I recall.

you'll win a prize of questionable value for which YOU will pay shipping

To receive your prize (guaranteed to be worth far less than $2.78), send tree-fitty plus shipping and handling to the address listed on your screen.

Numbering is for pansies. We just draw a diagonal line across the top of the deck (and try not to trip on the way to the mainframe).

Punch cards?! You guys had it good.

Try using oiled 1-inch paper tape, an ASR-33 Teletype with paper punch and reader operating at a blazing 110 baud. Or entering your program using the front panel switches on a Hewlett-Packard 2116B minicomputer with 8K of core memory before you learned how to use the paper tape assembler. Now THOSE were the days.

If there's one thing that impresses the ladies more than a bunch of middle aged guys playing with toy helicopters... it's got to be a geek pissing match. I think we all win!

You know you are a true nerd when you can get a chuckle out of recognizing code that writes an array beyond it's defined boundary with bounds checking disabled (even in those languages where it doesn't exist unless you write it explicitly) and begin to eat into the rest of your heap and eventually everyone elses because of an errant for loop counting from 0 to 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 (unsigned long max value - typically)

I'm glad I'm not the only guy here who started his computer life on the TI-99/4A. I had a hell of a time figuring out how to make it store data to my Realistic tape recorder. I was only 12, and couldn't grasp the concept that storing data didn't happen in just a second or two.

I played "Hunt the Wumpus" on my 4A. For some reason, I loved that game. But like I said, I was only 12... what did I know?

The old days are a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there.

What's a 'Wumpus', and why would anyone want to hunt for one?

It was some little game that TI released. You had to make your way around these blind tunnels, trying to determine where the Wumpus was (a cave creature)) without actually entering the cavern he was in. You had to fire when you believed he was in the next cavern, but if you were wrong, he ate you. In some ways, it was kind of like Minesweeper (the one that's in the Windows game list).

^^^ Still got it? Hang on to it if you do.

I bought a TRS80 Model 1 in 1978, found out that you could double up on the 4 memory chips you could make it have 64K of memory. The cassette recorder was a real pain to get the volume right to save or load a program in. After a few months, I found a place that hocked me up with twp floppy drives, man I was in business then. Like someone else said, I saw a 5 meg Hard Drive at a Radio Shack store. If remember right, that hard drive was like 18" x 18" x 5" and I was thinking the price was more like $5000. I kept my companies books and did payroll on that computer for a while. I would lose power and lose everything I had done, so I went to Radio Shack and bought an inverter, then went to an Auto Parts store and bought a large battery. It worked good enough to get my work stored when I would lose power, the monitor went crazy though.

Stan

Stan 2- Logo 500 Ion X2 eAvro90

Lol... I though Al Gore invented this thing called internet.

I had a timex sinclair, and man that stupid membrane keyboard used to suck not to mention the tape deck. Then came the commodore 64 with 300 baud modems, logging into BBS's. Then came this thing that Al gore invented/discovered and you used to gopher and ftp down files to see the images... god... that sucked, you would get half an image then bam... disconnect! lol, not to mention the busy tones!